This One is Human

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This one is long. This one is personal. This one was not easy for me to put all out there.

This one is human.

So if you have a hot minute, stick around.

I’ve been really ‘thinky’ lately. My brain feels full of ‘big stuff’.

This happens every so often for me. Normal I suppose, to reflect, process and re-center your self. But this time I’ve been left feeling really bummed. I think coming to some realizations can leave you wide-eyed and uncomfortable. I’ve now realized these things about myself and I’m mourning the fact that I’m just figuring it out now. I’m bummed that I can’t ‘fix’ these things about myself in a day and I’m frustrated that these ‘fixes’ aren’t easy, rather time consuming and needing dedication. But that’s what this journey is all about; figuring yourself out, adjusting what needs fixed… and then doing it all over again when you discover the next thing.

My thoughts will be all over the place, but this is where my brain is:

I disappoint myself. I get cocky, I loose sight of love, and I’m selfish:

I think I’m better than I really am and I crave affirmation in everything I do. Everything. Leaving no room for my own confidence, or a belief in my own capabilities. This cockiness comes from a wide variety of places. For example I live a pretty ‘straight and narrow’ life. I don’t get in trouble. I live within the box. I don’t make ‘terrible’ decisions. In so many ways ‘I’m doing it all right’. (Yet, hardly doing anything at all). In living like this you start to believe that you’ve got it all figured out. That your way is the right way. This is how I’ve become arrogant. Because I crave so much affirmation and usually receive it (because I’ve demanded it for far too long) I get boosted up (just like I’ve craved)… making myself believe I’m someone or something I’m really not. It’s true, I’m not what my Facebook makes me look like, I’m not what my blog appears to be. I’m a girl trying to make everyone think I’ve got it all figured out and that this life is far more perfect and I’m far better than I actually am. It's not. I'm broken like the next person. I'm selfish more than I'm not. I don't love like I should. So I’m coming clean. And I'm putting it out there so I can work on it and so I can be better.

First thought down, on to the second.

Dealing with how I've changed, how they've change, how we've changed:

Relationships change. Every single relationship in my life has changed over time. This probably seems so obvious. But for me it's not. I keep clinging to a lot of relationships I use to have. Many, if not all, of these relationships still exist; it’s just that they are all very different. Change. Change happens, and I mourn what use to be, totally blurring all the wonderfulness that each change has the potential to bring. People change. The obvious being: they’ve aged, they’ve moved away, they’ve married or had babies… but then there are the less obvious changes, such as loving me differently, or me loving them differently. Or gaining new perspectives that create differences in beliefs, in faith and in purpose. And then the other unidentified changes that happen so slowly and so quietly that you are left wondering, “when did that happen?”

           

Even my closest and most important relationships have changed. I’m a daughter to my parents, but a grown daughter now. I’m “parented”, but in different ways. This can be tricky at times. And I often walk a fine line of reverting back to the old daughter that I was, only to remember that I’m a married daughter, off doing life as a wife in addition to life as a daughter.

And then there is my relationship with my husband. Days away from our three year anniversary and I’m the first to admit that our relationship is different now and very different from the first few months of our dating. We love each other still, obviously, but we also love things about each other we didn’t know we were going to love or going to need to love. For me words mean far more now than they ever did when we were dating. Communication is more necessary to me now than then. Showing and doing love are defined in new ways as we ‘do marriage’ and my heart desires more than a kiss, but moments of pure joy as I find myself craving his success and his accomplishments. In marriage I’ve also noticed our relationship change from the excitement of the future to more of the practicalness of the present. We love thinking about our future, but there is a very realistic vibe to our dreams. This sometimes leaves me sad, as if those ‘big dreamers’ are now two jaded individuals just trying to capture what it seems everyone else already has (jobs, house, kids… stuff).

And then I look at my relationships with my lady friends. Ya’ know all those wonderful women you meet in college or high school…the ones you put in your wedding and promise to be best of friends forever? Yea, those relationships change too. And I mourn them.

When relationships are the most important thing in my life, it can be hard to adjust to the reality that things change. I’m working at realizing that if things didn’t change, we’d all be the same naïve yet ignorant people of our past. Change is needed. Growth is needed… But sometimes it hurts before it’s healthy.

And my last ‘thinky’ point of this long brain dump:

 

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I compare myself to others a lot:

 

My talents, my smarts, my body, my marriage… my everything. And it’s exhausting and it’s overwhelming and it’s destructive. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why can’t I rejoice in who God made me to be? Why is wanting something else so much a part of who we humans are? Being healthy and happy and living in abundance just never does seem to be enough, huh?

This makes me sad. This makes me frustrated. This has been my prayer lately, that I see beauty in me that I’ve not so easily seen before. This ties in to my first point, where I pretend to be better than I am hoping that this outward appearance brings a confidence that I feel I so desperately need. But the ‘fix’ needs to come from within. I know this, and this is what will take time and dedication.

Looking to others and being happy for them with out being envious is one of my greatest hopes for myself. Always wanting what I don’t have, forgetting that there are plenty of others out there who desperately wish they had what I already do.

Contentment. That elusive and fleeting state of mind and heart. I will continue to search it out knowing that each day I might be a little closer.

So that’s what I’ve got for now. Plenty for me to work on. And I'm going to. I'm going to be better, and I'm going to be more of the person I've always hoped myself to be. This is just a part of the process in getting there.

What are you working on? I can't be alone in all this, right? :)

This is the smile that says I'll get there....